by Christopher Bacas

We make unplanned pilgrimages; a friend, job or tragedy send us barefoot around sacred mountains. Eyes fixed on the path, we’re prevented from losing our way by loyalty, diligence or grief. Anyone we pass is possibly the most important person we will ever (not) meet.

A job: play half-hour concerts; moving from unit to unit in an eleven-story Upper West Side building. Our private audiences, home-bound seniors. We are a saxophone/bass duo. My partner, Joshua, sings in English and Spanish. Our employers provide a list with names, apartment numbers and an emergency contact.

On the ninth floor, our first stop, a caretaker slowly opens the door. A vector of heat escapes around her into the drafty hall.

“Musica?”

“Si, si”

We announce our sponsor’s name. She doesn’t recognize it. Voices inside call out, ricocheting off a bare floor. She opens the door all the way. In the center of the room, behind a walker, Nayeli slumps into a kitchen chair. Swollen with disuse, her feet rest on a fresh, spread out Depends. In the corner, her husband, Tolentino, in a jacket and spiffy sneakers, sits on the edge of a plush armchair, knees tight. He gets up to shake my hand. Then, I lean in to shake his wife’s.

I pull my horn out of the case, assemble it and get ready to play. With upturned eyes, the couple appraise our instruments as if they were caged snakes. A brief cloudburst follows; small sounds musicians make before playing: soft descending notes in whooshing funnels, rattles and clicks. Then, silence, awkward and centripetal, whirling us into the present. We look at them. Read more »

Snake Tales

1. Taking the Rap

. . . so I said to Eve the Courageous:

here’s something extraordinary—
a thing as sweet as knowing
but bitter too, possibly lethal,
and (at the very least)
a gateway to trouble,
yet a wonder worth the risk

while Adam (you must know)
was not off on some pious ramble
through the garden picking figs
and licking maple sap
….. praying, Lord, Lord,
but was right there,
his side with dubious absent rib
pressed against her, naked, attentive,
positively inclined but cautious,
prepared in case things went south
to slap a fig leaf on
and have the woman
take the rap

Jim Culleny
4/15/18

by Liam Heneghan

A celebrated altercation between Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the Florentine artist, and fellow sculptor Bartolommeo Bandinello (1493-1560) resulted in the latter exclaiming “Oh sta cheto, soddomitaccio.” [Shut up, you filthy sodomite!]. The accusation had merit in the legal sense at least since Cellini had indeed been accused of the crime of sodomy with at least one woman and several young men. The incident is oftentimes recalled in writings about the period as it provides a compelling illustration of the sexual appetites of the artists of the Renaissance.

Bandinello unleashed his invective against Cellini in front of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, who was patron of both artists. The incident is recorded in Cellini’s autobiography My Life. The insult is infamous, but events that culminated in the insult are remarkable in their own right for they shed light, not on the sexual peccadilloes of the times, but rather on the attitudes of Renaissance artist to works of antiquity. They also are helpful in thinking more generally about how the quality of works might be assessed.

As Cellini reports it, the encounter started with Cellini visiting the ducal palace in Florence, where the Duke is expressing his enthusiasm about a box sent to him by Stefan Colonna, a general employed in the Florentine services. Cellini opens the crate on the Duke’s behalf and marvels at its contents. It is a statue in Greek marble. Although the statue is damaged, as is the case of many of the works of great antiquity, Cellini writes, “It is a miracle of beauty.” Furthermore, he declares, “I have never seen a boy’s figure so excellently wrought and in so fine a style among all the antiques I have inspected.” High praise indeed. Read more »

Kassou Seydou. Bopu Kogn- coin de rue, 2017.

Acrylic on canvas.

More here, here, and here.

by Emrys Westacott

What do 21st century American college faculty and 19th century Church of England Clergyman have in common?  A surprising amount. This is one reason I would heartily recommend the novels of Trollope, Austen, and others to my colleagues in academia.

Clerics are interesting figures in a number of 19th century novels.  Sometimes they are portrayed sympathetically, as is Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey; often, though, they are ridiculed, either gently, like Bishop Proudie in Barchester Towers, or scathingly, like Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. But what should draw rueful smiles of recognition from academics today is not the personality types represented but their situations within a complicated, hierarchical system that dispenses enviable benefits to some and chronic frustration to others.

Extrapolating from such novels with a little imaginative license, we can form the following picture. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Church of England had about 11,500 “livings”–positions tied to particular parishes. These typically came with a house (the vicarage, the rectory), and an income, often quite modest. Such livings were usually dispensed by individuals or institutions that were major landowners in the parish. They provided life-long security and social respectability.

Under the primogeniture system of inheritance, the eldest son inherited the bulk of his father’s estate.  This meant that younger sons of the gentry had to pursue some profession, and the respectable options for those who viewed trade as rather sordid were few: the military, the law, medicine, or the church. One of the important functions of the Church of England at that time was thus to provide socially acceptable employment to educated middle and upper-middle class men who lacked independent means.

Unfortunately, there were many more educated young men seeking positions in the church than there were “livings.”  Supply exceeded demand.  As late as 1830, about fifty percent of Oxbridge undergraduates intended to enter the church. Recently minted Ph.D.s seeking tenure-track positions will have no trouble relating to their situation. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Carl Pierer

Since 2014, various student societies at the University of Edinburgh have but on musical performances commemorating the first world war. This article takes a look at one performance in particular. The content is neither highly original nor particularly radical; others have written more insightful and more sophisticated pieces. It constitutes merely an attempt to formulate and to clarify what is problematic with these particular performances, thereby hoping to understand something about the greater memorial tradition in the United Kingdom. In other words, by examining how a nationalistic, martial and oppressive Erinnerungskultur is reproduced in an amateur to semi-professional context – be it deliberately or not -, we may see how these values become normalised and why it matters that this takes place in this particular context.

The most recent performance in this series was the Edinburgh University’s Brass Band spring concert. The programme featured some classical, some modern classical and contemporary pieces loosely linked by the theme ‘pictures, moving pictures’, as well as some others, which were put together under the theme of ‘war’. While this in itself might already be seen as problematic, there are three features of this programme that I would like to focus on: First, the introduction and subsequent dedication given by the band’s director. Secondly, the poem read to accompany a piece in the second part of the concert. Lastly, the omnipresence of poppies.

The evening’s programme was introduced by the band’s director as a mix of pieces fitting the ‘moving pictures’ theme and – because “to remember the Great War in our days is important” – others fitting the ‘war’ theme. There is something odd about this amalgamation of themes. For one, it seems to take away from the remembrance aspect to see it intermingled with unrelated pieces such as Mussorgski’s Pictures at an Exhibition.  What was even more bizarre was the almost casual introduction of the serious topic of remembrance. Yet, the most bewildering issue was that – in 2018 – such a memorial concert can be dedicated expressly and exclusively to the ‘heros’ of World War I. Of course, the term ‘heros’ in itself appears as a poor choice, for – unless problematised – it risks simply repeating the military distinction between soldiers willing to ‘die for their country’ (worthy of praise) and cowards, weaklings, traitors (who actively refuse to participate – and hence are worthy to be shot –  or who are excluded from becoming ‘heros’ because of their sex, age, gender or some other reason). But above that, it is the exclusive use of ‘heros’ that is deeply problematic. Aren’t all the people, who battled to survive through the First World War but who didn’t (or refused to) die a ‘heroic’ death worth being remembered? Moreover, even if we were to accept this terminology, how can we continue to praise only the male ‘heroes’ – all but erasing the female ‘heroines’? As will become clearer below, the ‘heroes’ comprised by this dedication were only British ones, an implicit nationalistic tinge that is uncannily present in too many memorial events for the first world war in particular. Read more »

by Evan Edwards

When my partner and I were expecting our first child, I remained obstinately distant from all parenting books. I had adapted, and taken to heart, Rainer Rilke’s advice to Franz Kappus about avoiding introductions to great works of art, and reckoning that, in the poet’s words, “such things are either partisan views, petrified and grown senseless in their lifeless induration, or they are clever quibblings in which today one view wins and tomorrow the opposite.” Rilke’s point seems to be that introductions do more to obscure our ability to reach the work of art than elucidate it. Since a child is, among other things, a living, breathing work of art, it took very little for me to translate the great poet’s advice to the work of child-rearing. Surely no book would truly help me approach a task as infinitely arduous and dizzyingly beautiful as bringing a human being into the world.

But my embargo on introductions to being a parent stopped short on one question: how do I raise a child in an age of accelerating mass extinction? And how best to teach them to care for the world, for nature? How do I talk to my child about the end of the world? While other issues in raising children often prompt answers that are simply as idiosyncratic as the authors pumping out these tracts, the question of how to raise a child who is not simply environmentally tuned, but tuned to a global ecosystem whose new overarching rule is rapid and often unpalatable change is one that any conscious parent will recognize as being largely outside the purview of the instinct for care folded into our biological and cultural DNA.

A good amount of thought has been put into this problem, explicitly starting with Richard Louv’s 2005 diagnosis of “nature-deficit disorder” in (mostly American) children of the time. Louv found that the rise of a “culture of fear” in parents, and the increasing influence of the emerging Web 2.0 were the main culprits for the children of the aughts’ disconnection from ‘nature.’ Since then, organizations like the No Child Left Outside Coalition and authors like Scott Sampson (in How to Raise a Wild Child) represent a growing chorus of voices that are aimed at getting children to spend more time outdoors. I know I need these books, and to hear these conversations, because I grew up in the 90s and early 2000s, and thus was part of the first generation of individuals bearing this diagnosis. This is, in part, why I decided to lift the parenting book embargo. One last note: although critics have pointed out that this “condition” is not new, it is probably right to say that before now, it was present in trace amounts, or steadily increasing amounts, until it got so bad (during my childhood) that it was finally diagnosed as lethal. The way that steadily increasing your daily arsenic intake can only keep you safe until it doesn’t. Liam Heneghan’s Beasts at Bedtime is partly in this tradition, but approaches it from an entirely different angle. Read more »

by Michael Liss

“You should look into this, perhaps write a little something about it.”

When Ed suggested something to you, it always emerged gently from his mouth as if on a cloud, and somehow morphed into a command by the time it reached your ears. He beckoned, I came, and now we were sitting together in one of his conference rooms, a MacBook and a bottle of unsweetened iced tea between us. My brand, in fact. It was a signal—he was telling me he knew, although we hadn’t talked in some time, that I’d gone cold turkey on Diet Coke. Of course he knew: he always knew, always was so wired in, always five steps ahead on everything. When we first met, roughly fifteen years ago, I had the absurd idea we were equals, but it took all of about a week for me to realize the central fallacy of that conceit. Still, he was remarkably good at recognizing and employing other people’s talents. And so, there would be a call or an email, and I would find myself conscripted to be a foot-soldier in Ed’s Army for some worthy cause.

I opened the iced tea, he clicked on a short YouTube clip, and I got my latest marching orders. Poke around, ask some questions, use that marvelous disguise of harmless late-middle age that allows me to pass unseen among men. Amass information, report back, write and post something. Topic: Bugs Bunny For President.

Of course, it sounds absurd, but, just how absurd is anything in politics these days? And Ed is a serious guy—if he’s lobbing this little gem at me, it means it’s not just him, but others in his happy little group are also considering it. So, on assignment, as it were, I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking, researching, looking at data, and talking to people. What I’ve found was that, the more I learned, the less irrational it seemed to be. Bugs Bunny for President. Doable. And desirable. Read more »

by Richard Passov

“…If I were to say my fellow man that we shall send to the moon 240,000 miles away from the control center station in Houston a giant rocket more than 300 ft tall the length of this football field made of new metal alloys some of which have not yet been invented capable of standing heat and stresses more than have ever been experienced fitted together with more precision than the finest watch carrying all of the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance control, communication, food and survival on an untried mission to an unknown celestial body and then return it safely to earth re-entering at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour causing heat about half that of the surface of the sun and do all this and do it right … then we must be bold.”

—President John F. Kennedy

On May 25th, 1961, President Kennedy gave a State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.  Though only five months into his term, Kennedy had reached a low point. The prior month witnessed Yuri Gregorian become the first man to orbit earth and the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

After acknowledging Russian resistance to a nuclear test ban treaty, Kennedy asked Congress to fund a rapid deployment force, a programing effort to counter Soviet and Chinese propaganda and a nation-wide effort to build fallout shelters to “…insure against an enemy miscalculation…”  

It was only in the final minutes that he turned to space.   The time had come, he said, for “…a great new American enterprise, which may hold the key to our future on earth.” That enterprise was to send a man to the moon and back before the end of the decade “…in full view of the world.”  And so the Apollo Space Program was launched.

Rather than assume the chairmanship of the Space Council, established as part of the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act and which Eisenhower tried to disband, Kennedy saw it as a parking spot for his troublesome Vice President.  Before taking office, he asked for an amendment to the Act to allow Lyndon Johnson to assume the chairmanship. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Evert Cilliers

There are the Bill Cosbys and Harvey Weinsteins and Matt Lauers of this world, and then there are the Al Franklins and the Aziz Ansaris.

There are those who need to be in jail — Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly, Russell Simmons, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump — and those who only need to be fired, censured, shamed or … maybe forgiven?

So, the first question is: why aren’t Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly, Russell Simmons, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump being criminally prosecuted, if Bill Cosby was? What makes them more special than Cosby? Read more »

Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

1.

Here's a philosophical heuristic about normative assessment: Domains and grounds for assessing responsibility will track domains and grounds for holding ourselves and others to be praise-worthy and blame-worthy. So, if there are unique ways to be blameworthy, there are coordinate ways in which one can be irresponsible. That's the rough heuristic, and we think it helps to elucidate intellectual responsibility.

One particular locus of intellectual irresponsibility is the exercise of our argumentative skills. On analogy with practical skills, there are situations where things go badly due to one's failure to exercise one's skill appropriately. Take the professional soccer player who shanks a shot over an easy goal, or the bartender who over pours a drink, or the teacher who mishandles a simple question in class. In these cases, it is appropriate for these people to blame themselves for their poor performances – it was their fault for failing to live up to a standard set by the skills they have. It's not because of the overwhelming difficulty of the situation, but rather it was because the requisite skills were not engaged effectively. Hence a modestly negative assessment of their performance is appropriate. Each may kick themselves for squandering a shot on goal, wasting whiskey, or a missed pedagogical opportunity. And so, too, may others. The sports writers may speak of the soccer player's ‘whiff,' and the barfly may mock the bartender's ‘party foul,' and a student may resent a question badly answered. Finally, notice that the degree of negative reaction of fault-finding is proportionate to the skills we assess these agents to have – the more skilled the soccer player, for example, the more blameworthy the shank. There's little, we think, unusual about these mundane practical failures of skill, and so it goes for intellectual skills, too.

Consider the skill of simply exploring a range of deductive entailments from a few pieces of information. The following task, Republican Friends, is illuminating. Assume these facts:

A is a Republican

A and B are friends

B and C are friends

C is not a Republican

Now the question: does it follow from these facts that there is at least one Republican with a non-Republican friend? Give yourself a second.

Read more »